Mark Twain said it doesn't repeat, it rhymes... 

    There is a preponderence of music in the clubs and on the streets played by young people (teens to late 20's) that seems festooned with an obsession about late 19th to early 20th century style.  I have been confused about where this is coming from.  Even the fashions of the players seems to hark back to that time but it comes out looking more like stretched out rags from the Bugsy Malone set.  Mostly they are playing rags, medicine show music, blues, and folk-songs. You see them carrying around banjos, accordions and euphoniums.  It's not new, it's already gone on long enough (at least five years here in New Orleans) that if it were the early 20th century they would already have come up with a new form of jazz and thrown themselves out of date.  They are, however, gripping tightly onto some set of imagery and I have been wondering why.  Perhaps, symbolically, it is showing what is in the following article...

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/05/14/1890s-america-a-peek-at-the-past-youre-repeating/

(For more on the idea in this post see this entry I wrote about the album by Aurora Nealand & the Royal Roses dedicated to Sidney Bechet (Sat. April 23). That piece was informed by similar ironies.)

     This article, "America: A Peek at the Past You're Repeating"  addresses more serious consequences of being unaware of social developments since the early 20th century.  It is clear that, at least locally, there is the very same lack of awareness about music development since those same times. The very subject of those music developments of the 20th century, both sonically and lyrically, were mostly about liberation, human and civil rights, and class problems.   Music is a mirror for what is going on in its culture, and it can't fail to be, although sometimes you have to be shrewd to see it clearly because the messages can be deeply masked (even from the performers.)  Right now, on all music fronts and genres there seem to be two main strains